AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ve always thought it’s so weird that sea captains have the authority to marry people.”
“You’ve always thought that?”
I laughed but kept going. “Yes! Like, why is it this one job in transportation that gives you this power? Why not train conductors? Or bus drivers?”
“I have never thought about it. Unlike you, who has always thought about it.”
“I stand by what I said!”
“I guess…” Russell tilted his chin up, looking at the sky, like he was thinking. “Maybe it’s because sea voyages used to be really long? And it’s not like on trains, where you’d be stopping in places where there would be ministers or rabbis or judges or whatever. So it was more necessary.”
“But these random ship people couldn’t wait until they got back on dry land? They had to be married in the middle of the ocean?”
“I don’t know. I mean, if you met someone on a ship—and you fell in love—maybe you wouldn’t want to wait. Maybe you’d want your life with that person to start right away.” He turned to me and something about his expression made my heart stutter again.
“I can see that.”
“That’s what my parents thought, at any rate.” I took a breath, to ask more about his parents, what they did, when he turned to me. “What about you? You live with your parents?”
“My dad,” I said with a smile. “It’s just the two of us.”
Russell’s expression suddenly became more careful. “Is—is your mom…?”
“They’re divorced.” I could see that he was waiting for more of an explanation, which I was used to by now. When a mom was the primary care parent after a divorce, nobody thinks anything of it. But when you tell them you’re being raised by your dad, everyone feels entitled to answers, some reason this is all happening.
I thought about going into all of it—but what was the point? It wasn’t even like it was a good story.
My parents met when they were both in college—she wanted to be an actress, he wanted to be a writer. They got married in a courthouse ceremony so Gillian could get on my dad’s insurance—he’d gotten a job at an advertising firm, something to pay the bills while he wrote his novel and she auditioned. They were planning on having a proper ceremony at some point in the future, but that never happened, because a year later, I came along.
The fact that my parents had me when they were twenty-four meant my dad was a lot younger than most of my friends’ parents. Didi and Katy thought it was weird I helped my dad’s best friend organize his fortieth birthday party. “Our parents were older than forty when we were born,” Katy had pointed out.
My dad always said this was part of the problem—that they had been too young to become parents. But whatever the reason, when I was two, Gillian left, going off to pursue an acting career. Since things hadn’t been working for her in LA, she wanted to be free to try her luck in New York, then London. And then five years after she left, she married a British guy. She ended up having three kids with Anthony—pronounced the British way, Ant-ony, like the h was just there for decoration. I saw her intermittently throughout the years, but not often. And people would sometimes make sad faces when they heard I didn’t have a mother, but I’d really never minded it. I barely ever thought about her, and we didn’t keep any pictures of her around. The wedding pictures and early photo albums had, since I could remember, always been boxed away in the attic. The only picture of Gillian I had was in a shoebox under my bed, and I didn’t feel the need to look at it much. You can’t miss what you’ve never had, after all. I’d also never had a dog, or a motorcycle, but nobody seemed to get all upset about that.
The last time I’d spent more than an hour or two with Gillian was when I was seven, and she was performing in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Since then, the times I’d seen her could be measured on one hand, and never very long, the two of us making stilted conversation at slightly too-nice restaurants. She sent me Christmas and birthday presents that I always opened last, alone in my room—knowing that they would be just a little bit wrong. And even when she moved back from London last year, it wasn’t like I wanted or expected anything to change. If it had been up to me, I would have been happy never seeing her again.
But then, this year, it had become very clear that it wasn’t up to me at all.
I looked over at Russell, lit by the fading Nevada sunlight, and I realized the last thing I wanted to do was bring Gillian into this. She didn’t belong here, and a bare-bones CliffsNotes version was all she warranted. “She moved to London and got remarried. They have three kids.”
“Oh!” He smiled at me. “You have half-siblings?”
“Uh—yeah. I guess.” I’d only met Gillian and Anthony’s kids once, at a very awkward dinner a few years ago. Their oldest daughter, Freya, sometimes tried to message me on Instagram, but I hadn’t ever accepted her requests. It wasn’t like we were going to become some happy blended family, so there wasn’t any point. “I don’t really know them,” I said now, shrugging one shoulder like it was just no big deal. “They mostly grew up in London.”
“Heck of a commute.”
“Exactly.” I looked over at him and smiled. “What about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I’m the only kid my parents had. Which was really nice, in a way. It was just the three of us, so I didn’t have to compete with anyone for attention.”
“Yes! Like with me and my dad—we became a little unit.” He gave me a nod of recognition that I thrilled to see. “It did always seem fun to have a big family, though. My friend Maud has three sisters, and her house is always busy and crowded and loud… but in a good way?” I shook my head. “I guess we’ll never know.”
We walked in silence for a few steps, and I could see the end of this street ahead of us. I wasn’t sure what would happen when we reached it, and slowed down a little, even though we weren’t walking that fast to begin with. “Is everyone telling you to prepare for the change in weather?” Russell frowned and squinted up at the sky, and I shook my head. “Sorry—not this weather. I mean, because you’re going to Michigan. Ever since I told people I’m going to Connecticut, all they’re doing is telling me I’m not going to be able to handle East Coast winters.”
“I know! And it’s not like we don’t have weather here. It does get cold in California occasionally. We’ll be fine.”
“Well—I’ll probably be fine. Michigan seems like a whole other level of cold.”
He laughed. “I think I can handle it. I’ve spent a bunch of time in Colorado, and it can’t be that much worse, right?”
